Shouma is just so aggressive, in a cast of comically aggressive people. It's not the usual kind of, dude has low self esteem so he's out of the way, but more like Reddit Nice Guy kind of bringing every conversation back to how he's worthless everyone he's interrupting again because he's worthless wait you are doing something anything that isn't centred around Shouma's feelfeels how dare you he needs to stand on a table to yell about well actually as a Shouma

Which is irritating enough, but also I need literacy points and he's the only person who can provide that which is just. Give him gift block your ears and do a runner.

You know what. I don't even care what the actual plot is. My entire point of this game is to lose my shit at everything Darumi ever say ever.

PS, how good is the pixel splash screen

I'm at day 75, 25 days to go.

So far I unlocked 48 event images, with 520 yet to be unlocked. This is wild maths. Like, is it just gonna be 500 pictures of protagonist screaming

Videos: unlocked 53, pending to unlock 151.

At least about half of the music was unlocked.

what the FUCK

Edit: that interlude was hella cool-creepy

The plot so far be like:
> Humans destroyed Earth's ecolog
> Earth as a life form activated its own immune system to wipeout humanity
> Humans have the technology to leave Earth and thrive in space
> Instead of that, humans opted to kill everything that's alive on Earth instead, somehow believe that will make Earth inhabitable again

Yeah I don't know what metaphor it's trying to make but damn

Ah, pity. I like Eito.

And to be fair, humanity isn't exactly lovable in this series.

And clever move to make the character screen "commanders absorption" number rather than "souls absorption" because, hey if technically speaking the absorbed are not commanders...

Huh so the ending suggestion is:

Because Takumi gets levelled up special power by absorbing Eito with levelled up special power, who in turn got levelled up special power by absorbing ???; AND Takumi can retain all his stats and just jump to a different time line.

So just... Kill every one the moment he meets them, absorb all their powers, then just restart with full god tier powers? Like killing your team don't even matter if they can be re-done from beginning, while keeping your stats

If it's anything like Zero Escape, I'm estimating I'm at 45% of game completion. Tbh at this moment it feels less satisfying than either the first run of Zero Time Dilemma as well as Danganronpa V3, specifically because I hate pseudo choices and Zero Time Dilemma fully embraced throwing a hard WTF at the player right in the first playthrough without pseudo choice that later turned out to be core to the main plot.

I sure hope there's a good inbuilt ending map though, no way I'd be able to remember what ending was caused by what and how what what the f

You know that thing in Zero Time Dilemma where you start the game, flip a coin of life and death at 15 minutes, immediately get a good ending with credit rolling and be like what the actual fuck just happened.

The Hundred Line isn't quite that over the top, but I'm getting sus that the real game is about to start from the point and onwards, as there hasn't been any decision trees other than the infuriating pseudo decision. Ultimately what I liked about Zero Time Dilemma is it's a linear game with many branches that acts as parallel chapters, and it's well communicated accordingly.

What I would really want now, is a clear route path laid out in flowchart. Zero Time Dilemma, Raging Loop, Quantum Suicide, and Ai the Somnium did this well. Gnosia barely gets away without it only because of achieving each ending is fairly straightforward with a guide.

I'm just too old and too tired to keep track on 100 routes otherwise, even super good games like Buried Stars just left me with, nah, I can't force myself through that many repeats and hope something's gonna change.

HOLY SHIT THE TITLE SCREEN'S BACK GROUND VERTICAL RED LINE TURNED INTO A RED 2.

So, upon game completion, it's The Hundred Line 1 -> The Hundred Line 2.

Zero Escape team, please fuck me up. I expect a lot now.

Edit: yes "The Hundred Line 2" is completely expected to be the second half of the branched out game. Look at on the saving file, it stated number of clears is 0 even though we've seen the credit once already.

Roflmao not only continued at where the first playthrough ended, if you go to backlog it has the backlog of the last conversation you had at the end of the last ending. It's basically Day 101 rather than NG+.

Also your entire party kept their stats, and the various rocks, rags and sticks you collected from last game are still here. I don't even want to know what their storage looks like.

I fully admit I have the temptation of wiping my entire team to absorb their powers, then reset to a new game.

Thankfully the actual game play don't reward this. Thinking about how Raging Loop got to the point that the characters were murdering each other for fun because they were so sick of the loops.

Starting a new thread on generic overall THL2 comments, might migrate a few other posts here.

Something I love is in every timeline, people just flatly ignore Shouma when he interrupts to bring the conversation back to him and trying to demand pity. Like people just flatly talk over his interruption, the only way to deal with this kind of personality.

He reminds me half of The Bear's Jamie's mother, half of circa 2000 Nice Guys who tried to use their low self esteem performance to get pity sex. Maybe also a bit like Dead Loch's serial murderer.

To his credit, in route 11 he actually managed to do something not entirely self centred. I'm pleasantly surprised.

I have to give Nozomi credit on this: the routes I've done so far, she's a master at effortlessly stirring up drama. Almost all events can be squirt sideways and you can argue it isn't really her fault, and being characters who don't know about split branches it's easy to overlook her centre role in every one of them. Except having the over view, it's always Nozomi. Eito can only hope to be this sleek.

There's something about the special kind of creepiness where she can go from remorseful and teary and demand to be told she did nothing wrong when someone died because of her, to jolly and hyper-optimistic and all giggle; within five sentences. And Takumi doesn't see anything wrong with it.

I wonder if she's a homage to Akane Kurashiki. I can't say I like Akane given her particular kind of sociopathic traits, but I do consider her one of the most interesting villains. She's just so gentle and so nice and love to talk about morality, what could possibly go wrong.

As I'm still at like, 7% completion, this might change.

Somehow THL2 managed something I've never seen in games before: Gaku constantly tries to body shame Moko for being large, except the punchline of these jokes always end up falling onto how pathetic Gaku is.

The context is Moko is large, tall and stocky. She's a professional wrestler who worked hard to have this body type, and her strength is something crucial to the team's function. It's pretty obvious from the beginning that literally everyone respect Moko (Heart and Determination of the Party) more than Gaku (Incel), and everytime Gaku whinges about Moko not being sexually attractive to him, the joke is Gaku is basically a Redditor who is deluded into thinking anyone even cares what he likes to jack off to.

I love this. I love not hiding that lots of men/boys do behave like this, and I love that without fail the only loser is Gaku.

Theory 1. Takumi is the real villain (Danganronpa, trope reused in Rain Code). Intentionally bland boy hero who is selectively stupid, and I found parts where player has no choice when his own choices are most controversial is sus for this. Nozomi is the decoy who looked like a villain but isn't.

Theory 2. Nozomi is the real villain (999/Virtue's Last Reward). Using childhood promise against a childhood friend as manipulation tool, everyone except protagonist recognised how much of untrustworthy pathological liar she is. Protagonist blindly defends her always. Takumi is the decoy who looked like a villain but isn't.

I'm not convinced they are both villains at this point.

I think Eito is in it for greater good, and it's implied humanity in this verse really are the real baddies regardless what else happens.

Tsubasa's range and her lack of fatigue turned her into the most intense power house. Attack potion + attack boost and she can clear and entire field.

Which reminds me , I don't think I ever felt whooa I love Tsubasa especially as a person, except I know if I need someone generally reliable and will get things done with minimal whinging, Tsubasa is my go to. I just can't deal with Shouma or Hiruko or Takemaru's endless whinge anymore.